Today's pleasure and industrial boat owners and users are required to give warning to other boaters of swimmers in the water adjacent to the boat whether for pleasure or commercial purposes. For example, in the case of pleasure boats towing water skiers, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) requires a pennant to be flown from the boat whenever the water skier is submerged in the water adjacent the two boat, say, after he loses his balance and falls during a water skiing maneuver. In that way, other boaters can be warned of the possible dangerous situation existing in the vicinity.
One of the problems of attempting to maintain a warning pennant assembly aboard a tow boat is that the former is only required during a selected phase of boating activities: during water ski towing. Hence, the pennant can be lost or otherwise mislaid during other activities; then when a situation arises wherein the pennant is reuired, it is not available and the USCG's regulations may of necessity be ignored.
While flags and other type of pennants have been flown aboard boats, ships and the like since early times, we are unaware of any prior art devices which allow the pennant and mast themselves to be relocated from a stowed position to an upright warning position by means of a top-action, hand-powered pennant assembly along a rotational arc defining a plane perpendicular to the foredeck of the tow boat which defines two terminal positions: (i) an active position where the pennant has maximum viewability and (ii) a stowed position closely adjacent to the foredeck.